Abstract

As a consequence of results due to Bourgain and Stegall, on a
separable Banach space whose unit ball is not dentable, the
set of norm attaining functionals has empty interior (in the
norm topology). First we show that any Banach space can be renormed to
fail this property. Then, our main positive result can be stated as
follows: if a separable Banach space $X$ is very smooth or its bidual
satisfies the $w^{\ast }$-Mazur intersection property, then either $X$
is reflexive or the set of norm attaining functionals has empty
interior, hence the same result holds if $X$ has the Mazur
intersection property and so, if the norm of $X$ is Fr\'{e}chet
differentiable. However, we prove that smoothness is not a sufficient
condition for the same conclusion.